Novel 212: Annie Edwardes, A Vagabond Heroine (1873)
In a remote French seaside town, a neglected girl resists her vain stepmother’s control.
Here is another novel by Edwardes (see Novel 158), featuring another attractively rebellious heroine.
“A most amusing tale.” Athenaeum, April 19, 1873
“It is humorous, vivid, rapid, lavish, and yet brief; unconventional almost to dash, and yet in no sense immoral in its tendency. . . . There is a flavour of something like true genius about A Vagabond Heroine.” Spectator, July 5, 1873
A contrasting view:
“We wish our lady writers would leave off drawing these queer, unlikely, and unlovable heroines. Murderesses and gamins, idiots and adventuresses, seraphs bred in the mire and angels fashioned out of the dirtiest clay—we are tired of them all. They are fantastic caricatures of human nature rather than sober and life-like portraits. . . . All these unnatural and impossible heroines are as little like the women of real life as are the six-handed and three-headed goddesses who may serve as emblems, but are absurd as artistic representations.” Saturday Review, September 27, 1873
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